<Begin Segment 6>

AR: How about when you started school here in Gallup, what kind of friends did you hang out with? Were they mainly Japanese?

MM: I didn't make friends very easily because of my half Japanese and Mexican. The other people, the other kids didn't want me around either, you know. I was, like I say, marked because I had the Japanese blood in me. And we were there at the Sacred Heart, at school there, and no. They didn't even want, some of those gals, they didn't want to sit with me, because I was Japanese. So, and the Sisters didn't do anything about it, you know? And so what I would do -- and they caught me at it, too -- I'd go to school, because I had to. They forced me to, but I'd get the love story magazines, put the geography magazine over here and I'd put that magazine, the other one here...

AR: Love stories?

MM: I'd read all those love stories while I was supposed to be reading about something else. So, I guess I wasn't nice, either. So...

AR: So the Japanese kids didn't treat you too well and the Mexican American kids didn't treat you too well?

MM: No. After the war, they couldn't do enough for you. They could not do enough. They just wanted to just, oh my god, you know, invite you to the house. I said, "You go jump in a lake."

AR: Well, when did you start working?

MM: I was twelve years old when I started working, and I started working for Mrs. Miyamura. They had opened up a cafe. The Okay Cafe on Coal Avenue. And I was twelve, and so my mother was washing dishes there and my father was cook, and I was going to school, or something like that. And so what happened there was I'd go ahead and, well, they wanted to teach me. Mrs. Miyamura was very nice. She says, "Come on, Toki, you can learn." So there was a man, I think he's still alive. He was the first customer I ever tried to wait on. His name was Joe Nuchi. And so Mrs. Miyamura says, "Here, go serve him his coffee. Go." And they had to push me out. I was forced. "Go on, serve him." And I wouldn't, and I put that coffee and get away from here real fast. [Laughs] But I got to stay there and I think I worked for them about three, four years. Get up before I went to school and then after school, you know?

AR: Wow.

MM: And then, later on, I don't know what happened. I stopped work there and went to work at the Eagle Cafe.

AR: Which was also owned by Japanese?

MM: Yeah. That was... I was sixteen years old then. And I worked there for maybe a couple of years, something like that.

AR: What family owned that one?

MM: Huh?

AR: What family owned that at the time?

MM: I think it was the Tairas.

AR: Tairas, all right. Now, were you contributing your money to the family income or were you just working for your own money?

MM: They took everything that I had. My dad, it was maybe $2.75 a week or a dollar or something and I'd come home and I'd give it to him and I remember. It was, we were living in this little house around here, and couldn't find nothing to eat. It was during the Depression and I was the only one working. And whatchamacallit, I'd come home from work and I had the, I think it was $1.75 and I gave it to him so they could buy food, that's the thing. And he felt so bad and he had gone that early during the day to try to find food for us to eat, and no, all he could find was some potatoes or something. So he'd come home and he cooked them for us and then he went ahead. And I remember now, he saw to it that we all had our share of whatever it was that he had cooked and he stood there and he was hungry, but he didn't touch our food. And later on, we remembered that, you know. At that time, we didn't. He just didn't touch anything, you know, and I said, "Boy, he done without, just to let us..."

AR: He must have been between jobs or something and you guys were working and he wasn't sometimes because of the Depression? Or he just wasn't making enough?

MM: There was no work at all, absolutely nothing. He'd go all over Gallup looking for work, looking for something.

AR: Now when you say you lived in the little house, you don 't mean this little...

MM: Yes. This little rock house that's right down here.

AR: That concrete thing?

MM: On Wilson, yeah.

AR: Oh, oh, I see.

MM: Yeah. We lived there... when I got married, that's where we were living.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2012 New Mexico JACL and Densho. All Rights Reserved.